Books by Gary Graybill

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Deadly Cost of Political Correctness

May 15th is Armed Forces DayTake a Moment to Remember that every minute of every day our Armed Services are out there fighting 2 shooting wars and enduring hardships in every far flung corner of the world so that we can go about our daily lives in peace and freedom!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Administration recently issued a report from the Defense Department on the Fort Hood shootings of last November. The report was a whitewash. It never mentioned radical Islam or noted the religious motivation of the Army psychiatrist who killed fourteen people at Fort Hood in Texas in the shooting rampage.

Major Hasan had a history of making radical statements and promoting decidedly anti-American sentiments. He was allowed to get away with marginal or even unsatisfactory performance for years. The Army, it seems, was aware of the Majors political and religious views but they had been thoroughly buffaloed by our 'politically correct' society into non-action. They were afraid of the criticism that might come from correcting religiously motivated actions. In this case political correctness resulted in a Muslim zealot who preached jihad and threaten “infidels” with retribution going crazy and massacring 14 unarmed soldiers who had no idea an officer wearing their own uniform could be a threat.

Sen. Lieberman has called for an “independent, bi-partisan congressional investigation” of the shootings. Since it’s obvious that the Pentagon is not going to investigate itself over this appalling terrorist attack on the homeland we definitely need Congress to do it.

Sen. Lieberman is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. He and another committee member, Sen. Collins, both sharply criticized the administration for its failure to turn over documents on the handling of this case. The Administration and the Pentagon have been slow to cooperate so Lieberman and Collins are now issuing subpoenas to enforce their call for the documents.

We have been seeing more and more incidents where political correctness has had consequences. We recently had a case where a General, a highly decorated combat veteran, was dragged through the gutter by left-wingers because he spoke at his church and criticized Muslim practices, such as the treatment of their women. He was vilified and it was blown out of all proportion -to the point that the casual reader might have thought the General was calling for another Christian Crusade to the Holy Lands. There were calls for him to be court-martialed or forced to resign from the service –just for expressing his personal feelings, in his own church, on his own time –and opinions which are, by-the-way, shared by many people including myself.

In another case recently, Rev. Franklin Graham was “un-invited” to the Army’s Day of Prayer because he made negative comments about Islam. Apparently the Pentagon now believes “political correctness” out trumps the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (I can think of at least 3 amendments this violates and I am no lawyer).

In still another case of political correctness gone berserk, we just had a young man who was born in Pakistan, traveled there 13 times in the past few years, had links to the Taliban and training tapes from known Al-Qaeda agents, was on the "No-Fly" list --and was still allowed to become a naturalized U.S. citizen and then board a plane bound for the Middle East after paying for the ticket in cash and not checking any luggage. --In this case he was going to the Middle East because he had just left a car bomb in the middle of Times Square in New York and was attempting to escape (apparently he was not yet ready for the 72 virgins).

Now think for a moment. How does this make any sense? Here is a man that yelled “Allah Akbar” (Arabic for “God is great!”) even as he squeezed the trigger in the worst case of terrorism here since September 11th. But –in this case, the Administration won't use the word s "terrorist" or refer to the Muslim connections. It seems they are hesitant to demand accountability of the military. General Casey made the rounds of TV talk shows after the shootings. He said it would be “a tragedy” if the Army’s diversity was a casualty of the FortHoodmurders. How was it that he (Major Hasan) was able to go around putting out anti-American and anti-Christian comments over several years? What happened to the oath taken by everyone in our military—to defend the Constitution against “all enemies, foreign and domestic.”?

We now know that Major Hasan’s emails to radical American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al Awlaki were intercepted by U.S. intelligence. But for some as yet unexplained reason, those contacts with this known terrorist leader did not result in Hasan’s arrest, or even a serious investigation into his activities. There are now 14 dead Americans, victims of this failure to take timely, effective action, that demand an answer...

Awlaki, the terrorist cleric, likes to taunt President Obama by saying: “His administration tried to portray the operation of brother Nidal Hasan as an individual act of violence by an individual. The administration practiced the control on the leak of information concerning the operation in order to cushion the reaction of the American public.”

We cannot wait for the media to probe this case. We need a full congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this story—before we see a repeat of this horror. It is literally a matter of life and death. The flaws in the system need to be tracked down and fixed –and we need to do it right now.

It appears that Major Hasan was allowed to get away with disloyal statements and treasonous conduct for years because he fit into someone’s idea of diversity. The problem is systemic because it starts with every individual. People at every level in the chain of authority hesitate to act on political sensitive items. They ignore things or pretend they don’t hear things they feel are politically sensitive, especially if it involves religion, race or sex. That has to be stopped and it is going to be hard to do. All Americans, and especially all members of our all-volunteer military, have a right to expect that treason and terror will be dealt with quickly and strictly. Political correctness in this case, was fatal –it will be again……

2 comments:

The cartoon was mean as a good-natured tease -however, since it offended a friend of mine from the Middle-east I have removed it with my sincere apology -no offense was ever intended. Further, I think it is important to point out that while there are Islamic extremists conducting a campaign of terror against innocent people my hatred is limited strictly to them and not to the millions of other Islamic peoples who do not approve of this behavior.